International audienceThe objective of this work was to observe and quantify the onset and evolution of localised deformation processes in sand with grain-scale resolution. The key element of the proposed approach is combining state-of-the-art X-ray micro tomography imaging with three-dimensional volumetric digital image correlation techniques. This allows not only the grain-scale details of a deforming sand specimen to be viewed, but also, and more importantly, the evolving three-dimensional displacement and strain fields throughout loading to be assessed. X-ray imaging and digital image correlation have been in the past applied individually to study sand deformation, but the combination of these two methods to study the kinematics of shear band formation at the grain scale is the first novel aspect of this work. Moreover, the authors have developed a completely original grain-scale volumetric digital image correlation method that permits the characterisation of the full kinematics (i.e. three-dimensional displacements and rotations) of all the individual sand grains in a specimen. The results obtained using the discrete volumetric digital image correlation confirm the importance of grain rotations associated with strain localisation

The aim of this paper is to report the very first in situ observations of the deformation behaviour of an Al-Cu alloy in the semisolid state by using ultrafast, high-resolution X-ray microtomography. It is shown that this deformation is non-homogeneous and involves an accumulation of liquid at an intergranular surface nearly perpendicular to the strain axis. Once the liquid is no longer able to feed such a region, micropores form and grow at this surface, finally leading to a crack.

International audienceThis paper presents an experimental validation of the use of the virtual fields method to identify the elasto-plastic behaviour of an iron specimen from full-field measurements with the grid method and a simple heterogeneous test configuration. The experimental procedure is carefully detailed since it is of primary importance to obtain good identification results. In particular, the use of two back-to-back cameras has proved essential to eliminate out-of-plane effects. Then, the procedure for extracting the elastic parameters and the parameters of a Voce's hardening model using the virtual fields method is presented. The results are very convincing and encouraging for future developments using more complex test geometries leading to fully multi-axial stress states. It is a first step towards the development of such inverse procedures as an alternative to difficult and costly methods involving homogeneous tests using multi-axial testing machine